I just had an article published in Libertarian Papers:
“Immanent Politics, Participatory Democracy, and the Pursuit of Eudaimonia,” Libertarian Papers 3, 16 (2011).
Here’s the abstract:
This paper builds on the burgeoning tradition of Aristotelian liberalism. It identifies and critiques a fundamental inequality inherent in the nature of the state and, in particular, the liberal representative-democratic state: namely, an institutionalized inequality in authority. The analysis draws on and synthesizes disparate philosophical and political traditions: Aristotle’s virtue ethics and politics, Locke’s natural rights and idea of equality in authority in the state of nature (sans state of nature), the New Left’s conception of participatory democracy (particularly as described in a number of under-utilized essays by Murray Rothbard and Don Lavoie), and philosophical anarchism. The deleterious consequences of this fundamental institutionalized inequality are explored, including on social justice and economic progress, on individual autonomy, on direct and meaningful civic and political participation, and the creation and maintenance of other artificial inequalities as well as the exacerbation of natural inequalities (economic and others). In the process, the paper briefly sketches a neo-Aristotelian theory of virtue ethics and natural individual rights, for which the principle of equal and total liberty for all is of fundamental political importance. And, finally, a non-statist conception of politics is developed, with politics defined as discourse and deliberation between equals (in authority) in joint pursuit of eudaimonia (flourishing, well-being).
Follow the link above for the pdf and MS Word files as well as discussion of the article on the Libertarian Papers website. You can also download the pdf from my Mises.org Literature archive.
Older versions of this article were presented at the Austrian Scholars Conference 2008 and appeared in my doctoral dissertation (May 2009) as chapters six and seven.
[Cross-posted at Is-Ought GAP.]
How close can a person get to the heart of a matter, and still pull back — just in time! — to avoid accepting any deep truth?
The answer seems to be: Very close. Microscopically close. Nanite-nudging nearness, measured in nanometers.
That margin of closeness was today put into black ink courtesy, once again, of Nobel Laureate economist and New York Times op-ed scribbler, Paul Krugman.
In “A Tale of Two Moralities,” Krugman once again hallucinates that a variant of libertarianism — unnamed, of course, and identified with “the right” — as being a major player in recent politics. He says the two moral notions that divide our nation, today, are as follows:
[Keep reading…]
I was reading Sarah Lacy’s “If You’ve Got Social Media Fatigue, UR DOIN IT WRONG” on TechCrunch and was reminded of a passage from Henry David Thoreau’s seminal essay “Civil Disobedience” that I discuss in chapter 6 of my dissertation.
First the passage from Lacy’s article:
Sometimes metrics can be a bad thing and beware of any so-called “social media consultant” who tells you otherwise. What’s the value of a Retweet or a Like? It’s roughly the equivalent to sitting next to someone during a keynote who nods his head at a salient point. Someone hitting a button in front of them is hardly a heady endorsement—nowhere near the impact of someone calling you to tell you about a story he read. That actually takes more than one-second of attention and work.
This reminded me of the moral hazards of voting in electoral politics and Thoreau’s likening it to a sort of gambling with morality:
All voting is a sort of gaming, like chequers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.
With this last sentence Thoreau is no longer really speaking of voting, as becomes clear later on when he writes “Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.” He is advocating civil disobedience and participatory democracy.
[Keep reading…]
